


For the sake of keeping

by reckonedrightly



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dog Tags, Dom/sub, Fantasy, M/M, Masturbation, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 10:51:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/925505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckonedrightly/pseuds/reckonedrightly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People left by their lovers keep the gifts they gave. Sentiment. John probably has other reasons for keeping his dog tags. The question of why John keeps them, though, is neither so interesting nor so alarming a question as why Sherlock <i>wants</i> them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the sake of keeping

**Author's Note:**

> It is half five in the morning and I haven't slept, I have not even feckin' proofread this never mind shown it to a beta, and this may be the first time in months I've used the word 'cock' in fiction when not trying to write insults.
> 
> Warning: Sherlock oversteps boundaries in a big way here. It's Not Good.
> 
> Enjoy.

The timing is important. Sherlock looks up Tube service, thumb stabbing at his phone-keys—there are minor delays on the Bakerloo line and he is almost, _almost_ disappointed to have the extra few minutes that affords him, but the fact remain: John walks fast and Sherlock takes a long line to come, and signal failures at Maida Vale won’t make much of a difference.

He throws his phone down on John’s bed, and drops to his knees. The box is under the bed, looking undisturbed as ever. Inside—four photographs, a hip flask Harry gave him as a gift when he passed out of training, a lot of dust, and the...the things, glinting there, silver and terrible. Really, it’s a poor show. John doesn’t need momentos. John carries his memories physically, shoulders back, in a permanent state of parade rest. But he thinks he should have keepsakes, kept for the sake of keeping: hence the photographs, hence the hip flask, hence—

Well.

People left by their lovers keep the gifts they gave. Sentiment. John probably has other reasons for keeping his dog tags. The question of why John keeps them, though, is neither so interesting nor so alarming a question as why Sherlock _wants_ them.

He wonders if he’s wasting time by touching them, fingertips just brushing the cool metal. It warms up quickly to his skin, the familiar grooves of John’s blood group, service number, surname, initial, catching against his violin calluses.

He’s not wasting time. This is foreplay.

But there’s such a thing as _too much_. With a sudden spurt of energy—his mouth is dry, his blinks coming too rapidly, strange—Sherlock snatches the silver discs and leaves the box on the floor, in the open, ready so that he can return the tags and shove it back beneath the bed on short notice should he need to. He clenches them in his palm, feels the edges dig into soft flesh, the chain overspilling his fist—draped down across his hand, cold against his skin. And he—and he—wants.

He sits on the floor with his back against the bed, his knees bent and spread. He can’t do it on the bed. He feels it would be Not Good. He feels John might—might take that the wrong way. If he ever found out. He’s not going to find out. Sherlock feels the tags warm to his skin and slides a hand across his chest, the silk of his shirt rasping against his nipples. Feels hot-cold shudders of want running through him. John’s not going to find out.

But imagine. Just imagine.

The noise of John coming up the stairs would be the worst bit, Sherlock thinks, pinching a nipple through his shirt, licking his lips. The familiar creak, the huff of John’s breathing (he can’t even breathe without making Sherlock want to feel it against the back of his neck, his stomach, his thighs). The worst bit would be hearing that, and having to make a choice.

Sherlock unzips his trousers. Still one-handed. Still keeping the tags tight in his fist.

In this fantasy, he knows what choice he would make. It’s terrible. Delicious. To want to be looked at like this, caught like this, his hand inside his trousers now and his cock half-hard and his breath coming in little pants, nervous little gasps. He gropes himself through his underwear, pretends it’s John: John being rough, manhandling him, squeezing too hard too fast, you like that, tell me you like that, and he tells him he likes it, loves it, ohyesplease.

Still rubbing himself through his underwear, he raises his other hand, until the chain the tags are on knocks against his cheek, his nose, his lower lip—cold against thin skin—he opens his mouth. Licks, bites, doesn’t mean to make the sound he makes as the links in the chain grind between his teeth and his hips buck upwards. Imagines John coming in _no_ better yet, imagines standing behind him, leaning down to fold his collar back, to find him wearing them; to kiss where the chain lies against warm, secret skin. John’s sweat, even John’s blood—he had to be wearing them when he was shot, and Sherlock whimpers, thinking about splatter patterns—has soaked the metal in his mouth.

He releases the chain, though. That, too, is foreplay. And finally his hips are lifting too insistently for him to keep rubbing himself through his underwear, though there’s something to be said for the idea of coming in his trousers. He’s done that before—rutted against his own hand, with the tags in his mouth and his eyes screwed shut, making indecent, needy noises, on his hands and knees in John’s room. Not today, though. Today he wants to be exposed, wants to spread his knees and feel the cold air prickling against his cock where he’s hot, thick, heavy with blood and with pulsing want. 

Looping the chain around his neck isn’t easy with one hand but he’s had practice and the tags knock against his chest and his head lolls back. He keeps rubbing them—rubbing them together, feeling out those familiar marks (A POS, 25159435, WATSON, JH and the utilitarian curve of that J is the most erotic thing Sherlock can think of sometimes). He’s making noises, his hand wrapped around his cock, stroking slowly up and slowly down, thumb teasing over the head. Imagine, imagine. What if John were to _give_ the tags to him, that’s an idea—what if John were to _put_ them there, say, “Hold still,” and, “Close your eyes,” and finally press his hand to where the tags lay against Sherlock’s chest, trap them between his palm and the urgent thump of Sherlock’s heart?

Without a shirt, Sherlock’s mind supplies, to get in the way, because John would already have undressed him, slowly, never taking anything off himself.

Yes. So Sherlock would be standing there with just the tags around his neck, and John might reach down, run a finger along Sherlock’s cock—might play with him, desultory, teasing, giving him a few short, quick strokes and making his hips jump forwards, hushing him and destroying his balance in the same breath—“Easy,” he might murmur, even while cupping Sherlock’s sac, or toying with the head of his cock. “Good,” he might say. “Good.” When Sherlock whimpered and whined, and tried to stay still, hands behind his back and toes curling against the floorboards: “Good.”

He’s still holding onto the tags. Metal that’s lain against John’s chest, soaked up his heat, trembled to the beat of his heart.

John might take the tags in hand. (Sherlock takes the tags in hand). John might lift them to Sherlock’s lips. (Sherlock lifts them to his lips). John might say, “Open.” (Sherlock opens).

“Good.” He might say that, too. He might say, “Suck.”

Sherlock’s sucking now, moaning around a mouthful of metal. Sour and bright against his tongue. The tags distort his noises, so that he’s gurgling, groaning, and not for the first time he wishes he’d brought lube, so he could work two fingers of his now-free hand inside himself, and imagine John: “Relax for me, that’s right, good, brilliant, _brilliant_.”

There’s spittle on his chin and he thinks, oh God, to be seen like this, precum dribbling from the head of his cock, his fist working desperately, his hips jerking and bucking and the tags stuffed in his mouth, oh God to be seen—and when he comes it’s with a shock a crash a wonderful white-out so that there’s nothing but John saying, “Good,” and the taste of metal in his mouth and the sheer eroticism of spilling, releasing, letting go.

And a few moments of quiet. He opens his mouth. For a few seconds he lets the tags rest on the flat of his tongue, and then he lets them slip away.

Sherlock fades back into reality to find stains on his shirt and therefore wipes his hand on it, because it’ll need washing anyway. It doesn’t arouse him, but he does lock up the image of being spattered with come for the next time around, with a kind of scientific absence.

It’s always hard to take the tags off. It’s always hard to know what to do with them afterwards, too. Well, take them off, of course—but then what? Wash them? Wipe them off? He settles for finding another patch of his shirt, and rubs away the saliva. Then he drops them into the box of unenthused, dusty mementos, all of which are so unlike John and the way Sherlock can read Afghanistan heat and the snarl of war in everything he does. He closes the box, puts it under the bed, fastens his trousers, and he staggers away, and below there is the sound of John opening the door.


End file.
